"Smart" movies you think are dumb

[Shamanic Rhythm]

To me that would be The Tree of Life-
Am I suppose to give a danm that mother son had died?
Why are we watching Walking with Dinosaur and the universe being born?
Ok so we're watching that family since childhood, what a bored.
Oh great so they are abusing animals now.
Why arethey important to the whole universe crap?

I found that movie really pretentious and boring. Didn't help that when I watched it I was stuck on a bus in the Andes with no toilet.

A lot of people have mentioned Inception. I wouldn't classify Inception as a 'smart' movie: it's more of a standard blockbuster that is a little more difficult to follow at times due to some of the layering. I don't think it's dumb, but it's definitely not 'smart', just frequently convoluted in nature.

For me, one that stands out is The Social Network. Yes, it's fairly authentic depiction of Silicon Valley frat culture in tech startups, but it was advertised as being yet another David Fincher masterwork of cleverness. It isn't. It's an extremely one-dimensional film. Nothing deep happens, it's just a slice of that lifestyle.

 

[lacktheknack]

Freaking Vertigo. I was told that Vertigo was the creme de la creme of Alfred Hitchcock movies, but it's as boring as tar.

I'd rather watch Rear Window again, and that one doesn't improve at all on rewatch. Really, if you're going to watch Hitchcock, go with The Birds or Psycho.

 

[pearcinator]

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Spoiler

I liked it better than Inception but I thought it was still quite dumb. Yeah it established the Cooper/Murph relationship but it seemed he wasn't very close to his son (goodbye forever *bro hug*). The scene when Cooper came back to the ship after 23 yrs and had to catch up on his children's lives was pretty good.

What is the fifth-dimension? The movie threw so much space-stuff at you I honestly got kind of lost. Gravity, Time Dilation, Black Holes, Wormholes, Centrifugal force, Love? Focus on one or two instead of trying to unravel every mystery of space in 2 hrs.

Also, I have only seen the film once but how did they find Cooper? Was he still in the black hole when the ship found him? Was the time-dilation for Cooper like a few seconds floating around = 50 years on earth? Surely there was an easier way to get the message through to Murph than 'write' the message on the watch in morse code? If he could do that then he could have written 'the answers to everything' on the back of the books?

Also, as a BIG sci-fi fan, the planets he went to were kind of meh. I felt like I had seen planets like them before in other movies, TV shows and video games. They could have come up with some interesting new planets. Maybe one with hyper-magnetic properties or gravity pockets or some shit.

Also, Anne Hathaway is shit in everything

 

[Lieju]

A lot of people have mentioned Inception. I wouldn't classify Inception as a 'smart' movie: it's more of a standard blockbuster that is a little more difficult to follow at times due to some of the layering. I don't think it's dumb, but it's definitely not 'smart', just frequently convoluted in nature.

A lot of people called it at the time at least really smart. I'm not really annoyed with the movie or people who made it though, but it was at least when it first came out called smart a lot.

I did enjoy it, but as an okay action movie.

 

[Vigormortis]

Spoiler

I liked it better than Inception but I thought it was still quite dumb. Yeah it established the Cooper/Murph relationship but it seemed he wasn't very close to his son (goodbye forever *bro hug*). The scene when Cooper came back to the ship after 23 yrs and had to catch up on his children's lives was pretty good.

As I'd discussed with another poster, the son was one of the things that bugged me about the film. He felt almost entirely like a plot device and not at all as a character. Especially in the 3rd act when he almost became a cliche.

What is the fifth-dimension? The movie threw so much space-stuff at you I honestly got kind of lost. Gravity, Time Dilation, Black Holes, Wormholes, Centrifugal force, Love? Focus on one or two instead of trying to unravel every mystery of space in 2 hrs.

Mmm, but almost everything covered involved only two principals. Gravity and space-time. All of the time dilation scenarios, warped space, etc, revolved around these two core subjects. So I felt as though they stayed very narrow with the concepts being covered. (and I discount the love bit since, when you consider the contrast to what's said by the characters what the film actually demonstrates, it's shown to be nothing more than a human emotion.)

As for the fifth dimension, it seemed as though they were going with the traditional form of 'dimension' from physics. Much like height, width, and depth, it's just another direction in which matter can move.

Also, I have only seen the film once but how did they find Cooper? Was he still in the black hole when the ship found him? Was the time-dilation for Cooper like a few seconds floating around = 50 years on earth? Surely there was an easier way to get the message through to Murph than 'write' the message on the watch in morse code? If he could do that then he could have written 'the answers to everything' on the back of the books?

The time dilation from Gargantua likely caused his journey, pre-crossing of the event horizon, to leave him decades behind Earth's time. However, after he'd crossed the event horizon, the future humans/5th dimensional beings pulled him (and T.A.R.S.) out of the singularity and into the Tesseract.

The Tesseract was just a three dimensional representation of individual moments in Murph's life. Specifically, moments occurring within her childhood bedroom. And within it, Cooper had no meaningful direct influence on anything within a given moment. About all he could do was use gravitation to give things a small 'nudge'. So I'm not sure he could have done anything any more significant than the few small things he did.

Though, could he have, it would have made sending the message a LOT easier...

After he'd successfully sent the messages to Murph, the future humans closed the Tesseract and sent him back through the wormhole. This landed him in orbit around Jupiter decades into the future, at which point he was found by the station security patrol. (I think it was the security patrol)

Also, as a BIG sci-fi fan, the planets he went to were kind of meh. I felt like I had seen planets like them before in other movies, TV shows and video games. They could have come up with some interesting new planets. Maybe one with hyper-magnetic properties or gravity pockets or some shit.

Egh, I don't know. I think they were aiming more for something probable. Something one might actually find out there.

The water world was a pretty cool idea, what with the 130% Earth's gravity, immense time dilation effect, and massive tides. The frozen world was pretty interesting as well, being a world encapsulated with a labyrinthine lattice of frozen clouds.

I mean, I understand where you're coming from. It would have been cool to go full on, balls-to-the-wall sci-fi with the world designs, but personally I feel as though something would have been lost from the film had they done so. Or rather, that those worlds would have felt....out of place, I guess.

Still, I don't entirely disagree with you. I like my fair share of high-concept, exaggerated design sci-fi too.

Also, Anne Hathaway is shit in everything

Oh come now. She has her moments. And, she's not afraid to do nude scenes in her films. You have to at least give her that.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

...I'm actually watching Donnie Darko right now.

I do sort of love it, partially out of nostalgia and partially because for all its flaws it still has great atmosphere (and, largely, solid acting). That said, it's angsty as hell and has a whole mishmash of ideas going on with the timetravel gubbins. Most of the secondary characters- Ms Pomerory and Mrs Farmer in particular, are horrible fucking cliches and the whole teen rebellion subplot that they exist solely for doesn't seem as cool now I'm not 12. Annoyingly it could have been a really great film if it restrained itself a bit- Just 'Is there some wormhole shit going on or is Donnie fucking loopy?' would be enough to work a film out of, without some of the stupider aspects of the time travel or the rebellion.

 

[maninahat]

Fight Club.

It's a much misunderstood "smart movie", in that teenagers think the anarchic Tyler is a hero worth looking up to, with lots of clever insights and philosophy. They're wrong, and we are in fact supposed to recognise Tyler as a destructive, selfish influence with a juvenile world view that is born of middle-class frustration and malaise. But that in itself is not very smart either. It's self indulgent and doesn't really go anywhere. I find the author's books in general to be all too suffocating in its constant, in-your-face story telling, and it comes across as over-bearing and a lot less smart than it thinks it is.

 

[BNguyen]

Well, not necessarily a movie, but I have definitely thought this about Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It's not bad. Certainly not. It's fairly cool. Intelligent? Ptff...! No. It showed promise early on. In the first few episodes, it emphasized how horribly things can go awry when you place all your hope in some kid to save the world from giant monsters when he has absolutely zero combat experience. The problem is that the show completely drops this concept entirely around the time Rei gets introduced. After that, virtually all the actual conflict is just the result of random hardware malfunctions out of nowhere... over... and over... and over again. It gets really old really fast. Shinji somehow becomes an expert soldier in almost no time at all and it's ridiculous. And no, that ending wasn't anything cryptic or profound or "deep". It was a long, drawn-out, trippy dream sequence about self-worth that way overstayed its welcome. That's it. Just going on for a very long time and being bizarrely-abstract doesn't make it particularly significant. The show also suffers from very poor audio direction. Though that could have something to do with the fact that they blew their audio budget on remixing "Fly me to the Moon" for every single episode. It's not bad, but don't be acting like this is some intellectual series with unconventional messages. Heck, even Valvrave the Liberator is more profound than Evangelion, and that series is totally bonkers. It's even got space vampires!

Guys...? Are we just gonna forget this whole thing about Shinji's eva unit being a living, breathing, rampaging monster? GUYS!? Hello? You're... You're not seriously trying to sweep that under the rug, are you? You can't think of anything to do with this big twist? Anything...? Anything at all...? No? What a waste. And here I thought the plot was actually getting somewhere. Silly me.

but it also explains that the evas won't work without specific pilots, or otherwise I'm sure that people with more combat training would be used. That's why in a later episode without Shinji in the seat they try to use the dummy system to remote pilot the eva but it refuses the commands or did you miss this part?

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

Donnie darko, everyone seems to love how "deep" this movie is but it's stupid to me and makes very little sense. the guy travels back in time to "save" the kid who got shot by dying in a plane crash but that doesn't help anyone and if you've ever known a family that lost one of the children in an accident you know the whole family is torn to pieces. he could of easily re-lived his week without the insanity and not had the kid die and things would have turned out fine.

 

[oversoon]

2001: A Space Odyssey is about mankind, and its "unneedded, inconsequential" first act works as an introduction to mankind. It establishes several running motifs in the movie and provides a foil to mankind's second encounter with the monolith as well. Feel free to not like it but every minute of that movie is there for a reason.

If I recall the director came out and said that the last act of the movie had no real purpose and was just to appear deep, which is one of the worst things you could possibly admit.

You don't recall. It's following the book, and it's certainly not "just to appear deep".

 

[rorychief]

Requiem for a dream is interesting visually (Even if the most memorable shot is lifted from Perfect Blue) but it boils down to drugs will wreck your life. The fact that all four characters end humiliated and broken is very black and white and in your face, like a PSA propaganda piece denying reality to push an agenda.

Kickass was never billed as intelligent, but I've heard it praised as a clever idea to subvert superhero tropes by focusing on mundane vigilantism and the delusions involved, a critique of power fantasies and the people who idolize superheroes even. The film fails at this though. Kickass himself is superhumanly durable and cannot experience pain while hitgirl is a bullet dodging ninja. All characters possess insane plot armor which is as good as possessing superpowers, and there is never anything morally ambiguous about their choosing to take police matters into their own hands. It subverts zero tropes, it runs with and relies on them and occasionally nods and acknowledges snarkily that they're there. Again I know its not considered a smart movie but it is often described as a deconstruction or satire when it is neither.

Super took the concept Kickass fumbled at and knocked it out of the park. better soundtrack too, (borrowing the Sunshine theme was one thing, borrowing the 28 days later theme AS WELL made it stealing associated tension and atmosphere in my eyes)

 

[Rellik San]

I don't know I see a lot of so called "smart movies" and kind of don't get it.

I mean get the films themselves for example:

Inception:
Public; It's so cool and hip and totally smart and confusing.
Me; It's a dream within a dream within a dream, it's set up so we never know if we're in the dream state or not, we only have specific anchors to know if we're in reality or not. Not that hard.

Donnie Darko:
Public; Oh man I don't get it, but isn't the soundtrack cool and what's with that Bunny guy?
Me; It's a film about cause and effect and that when Donnie didn't die in the plane crash this moved him out of phase, the numbers represent how long he has in the cycle and he's haunted by the ghost of a man who in this reality he killed (but didn't yet).

A lot of people go on about the Fountain.
Public; Oh man the Fountain what a beautiful and weird film that is, I wonder what it's about.
Me; It's about a man quest through time in order to find rebirth which he eventually does with the tree of eden as a metaphor for his own gradual wisdom, him at the tree is the metaphysical link between modern and conquistador Hugh Jackman and when he eats from the tree it's peeling back the layers of understanding. It's also the most beautiful movie that ever bored me to death.

if people have any others they want breaking down please tell me. It's kind of a good/bad habbit of mine, I break down complex ideas into their basic points only to reveal... what is really a simple seed underneath... I am the wrecking crew of artistic intent.

Super took the concept Kickass fumbled at and knocked it out of the park. better soundtrack too, (borrowing the Sunshine theme was one thing, borrowing the 28 days later theme AS WELL made it stealing associated tension and atmosphere in my eyes)

*HIGH FIVE FOR SUPER" I love that movie... everything about it is awesome. Although my SO still won't dress as Boltie for me.

 

[rorychief]

I love that movie... everything about it is awesome. Although my SO still won't dress as Boltie for me.

That's a shame. Gushy with masks on is the best.

 

[Rellik San]

I love that movie... everything about it is awesome. Although my SO still won't dress as Boltie for me.

That's a shame. Gushy with masks on is the best.

:O

As an aside I think Super is a case study for the opposite of what this thread is about. Super is a smart movie pretending to be dumb.

 

[rorychief]

As an aside I think Super is a case study for the opposite of what this thread is about. Super is a smart movie pretending to be dumb.

Totally. I loved how no one had to beat us over the head with the point that Liv Tyler didn't want to be rescued. Except that cop maybe suggesting that moving out of the house wasn't a crime, but still Super was deluded in his obsesssion with rescuing her from the life she had chosen over him, and even though it ultimately turned out that life was horrible, i doubt he would have done anything differently had it been a stable happy life. So long as she was apart from him it must be because she was kept there under duress.

Its wickedly dark and plays his hero complex completely straight without any dressing down moment where a sane point of view deconstructs his psychosis. Boltie enables him because she's in love with the idea of righteous reasons to hurt and humiliate people, even if they don't deserve it. The god's finger moment is never addressed as a paranoid schizophrenic's hallucination, it is treated as an awakening and license to act from a higher being. A nice neat wrap-up ending is in fact a psychopath forgiving himself for mass murder, without ever addressing it as such, and coming to terms with being alone, which is growth for his character without the need to repent for his violence and acknowledge his own responsibility in getting Boltie killed.
I just love how the movie acts dumb and glosses over the horror and madness, just as the main character treats everything as though it turned out ok so long as the girl got saved and the bad guy got vanquished. Hated hearing critics then say the movie suffered from dissonance between its tone and narrative, when that was so obviously the point. Freakin' Excellent movie.

 

[BNguyen]

Smart in this case is a bit proportional, but Frozen is this for me,

The big twist that the prince was evil was obvious the second you remember that there are almost no live triangles in Disney movies, especially since the movie isn't about the love, so obviously they'll just reveal one of them as evil. It's just another Gaston.

The entire "accept your difference" is overused as fuck in current popular media that "everybody is super duper special" and just about anyone can interpret it in a way that suits them.

And the little sister being saved by sibling love was already made in Brave.

It's not a bad film, but dear god people are hyping it and it infuriates me that people see tropes being averted or laughted on as genius despite being made million of times.

that and elsa, or whatever her name is, looks like a smarmy ***** in all of the advertisements, anna looks like a naive dork and olaf is just grating

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I like Donnie Darko and find it interesting, but dear GOD does it not even attempt to make any fucking sense, on either a storytelling level or its own pseudo-philosophical level. I?ve watched it twice and read the little manual that comes with the special DVD, and I can still find one or two plotholes in it that just makes the whole Jenga tower of clusterfuckery collapse. Inexplicably, my friend says it?s his favourite film and he ?totally got it first time?.
Perhaps it is better to just watch it as the schizophrenic hallucinations of a thoroughly creepy teenager (awkwardly played by a younger Jake Gyllenhaal before he realized he was gay and fucked the Joker). Not to mention I love the scene where he and his friends are stoned talking about Smurf dicks, and the Mad World track at the end.

Inception. Maybe it?s because I haven?t watched it a second time since I first watched it with my overhyping friends in the cinema, but?I despise that film. And I?m beginning to despise Christopher Nolan?s directing too. The man cannot employ exposition effectively to save his ass.

Baz Luhrmann?s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Not only did he completely misunderstood the source material, but practically no-one but Gatsby himself and maybe Jordan felt remotely like their actual characters. Poor directing, poor script, poor aesthetics, poor casting (is Tobey Maguire even a good actor? I?ve only seen his Spider-Man films)?poor everything, really. Honestly, the only good thing I can say about it is DiCaprio?s performance as Gatsby; he was the diamond in the god-awful rough.

Kill Bill Vol. 2. The pacing is terrible, the climactic confrontation between the Bride and Bill is overly drawn-out, and the ending is gag-inducingly syrupy. The only reason I?d ever watch it again is just for that scene where she plucks out the one-eyed female assassin?s other eye with some kind of Hokuto Shinken-type technique taught to her by a xenophobic Japanese mentor stereotype.

The Silence of the Lambs. *puts up flame shield* I?m sorry, but I can?t get over how one-dimensional the film version (haven?t read the book, but I know they apparently expand on much of his backstory, such as why he hates his own identity) of Buffalo Bill is. He?s basically ?Look I?m a creepy serial killer with nipple rings who wants to be a woman BUT DON?T WORRY I?M NOT REALLY TRANS?. And maybe it?s gotten a bit dated, because I found Hopkins? slimy performance as Hannibal Lecter somewhat?narmy.

The Butterfly Effect. All I remember about that film is it being really stupid, full of inconsistent time-travelling and Ashton Kutcher panicking about continuously fucking up his life whatever he does (*whisper* it?s not a true story, guys?). And the ending?was also pants-on-head retarded.

 

[General Grind]

A lot of people go on about the Fountain.
Public; Oh man the Fountain what a beautiful and weird film that is, I wonder what it's about.
Me; It's about a man quest through time in order to find rebirth which he eventually does with the tree of eden as a metaphor for his own gradual wisdom, him at the tree is the metaphysical link between modern and conquistador Hugh Jackman and when he eats from the tree it's peeling back the layers of understanding. It's also the most beautiful movie that ever bored me to death.
(

Spoiler

First of, let me preface this with saying that The Fountain is one of my personal favorite movies of all time. However, I completely understand people finding it pretentious, overreaching and/or boring. I don't think people who don't like the movie are less intelligent or don't "get it", just that the movie just doesn't speak to them as it does to some people.

But I would like to urge you to reconsider what the movie is actually about. At it's core, I think it's a movie with one simple overarching theme/message, like most of Aronofsky's movies. (Requiem for a Dream = Don't do drugs, Noah = Humanity is flawed, perhaps cripplingly so). The main message of the movie is, in my mind, simply: Death is natural. And the movie is simply a story about a man coming to terms with that.

I think Conquistador Jackman is quite clearly a fiction, created by the Jackman's wife in the present and that present day Jackman is the protagonist. There are two prevailing theories on future Jackman that I have read: One theory is that present day Jackman finds a cure for death and lives for hundreds of years and is the future Jackman, while the other is that future Jackman is present day Jackman's way of finishing his wife's story. Either way, I think the ending is Jackman's character coming to terms with the death of his wife and with death as a concept. I think the main point of the Tree of Life and the Garden of Eden stuff is to say that death is the natural extension of life and that by dying we give life to other things, thus "Death is the Road to Awe".

Sorry for the rant. It's late and I like to discuss The Fountain whenever I can.